


ghosts

by jasondont (minigami)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: A New Dawn - John Jackson Miller, Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order (Video Game), Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-23 03:30:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23038471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minigami/pseuds/jasondont
Summary: Kanan Jarrus, drifter and former Padawan, arrives at Bracca looking for work. Unfortunately for him, there's already a fugitive from the Purge living there.
Relationships: Kanan Jarrus & Cal Kestis
Comments: 11
Kudos: 166





	ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> i've kept their canon ages, although they're bullshit, because they kind of work for this particular story and i didn't want to have to think about it.
> 
> the thing about a possible meeting between kanan and cal is that i'm pretty sure that it wouldn't have changed much for them, at least in the short run. that is: they'd probably could have stayed together, but they wouldn't have. they'd be too sad and traumatized and scared to actually be able to help each other.

The representative from the Guild keeps turning his head towards the open door, a rectangle of grey light in the damp darkness of the mostly empty cantina. A pair of the new Imperial stormtroopers wait outside in the rain, their armour still white and shiny. Their sloped shoulders and the way they shift their weight from one foot to the other makes Cal think they feel almost as cold, wet and miserable as he does. 

Prauf, his long legs uncomfortably bent under the ricketty cantina table, keeps trying to capture the one-eyed Rodian’s attention without success. He’s been arguing for weeks with the Guild for better working conditions, and predictably encountering nothing but indifference. And while the Rodian might be an old friend of his, it’s obvious he would rather be anywhere but there, and that he’s just looking for an excuse to make his escape.   
It’s just another defeat in Prauf’s fight against the inevitable: the Empire won’t budge, and the Guild cannot afford to. The new regime is more interested in fast profit than in long-term efficiency. Riggers like Prauf and Cal and everyone else in Bracca are an infinite, infinitely renewable resource: the Empire is so sure of its own ability to find substitutes for every rigger who dies or decides to change careers that they can afford to ignore the Guild’s old guidelines. And from what Cal has seen for the past four years, they are not wrong. 

For some reason, he’s been asked by Prauf to accompany him to the meeting at the spaceport. Cal understands the reason why Prauf’s other companion is there: Meeda is an ugly, scarred Quarren who’s missing half a face of tentacles, a Clone Wars veteran who is very kind and very good at looming ominously behind people’s shoulders. Cal, who at seventeen is starting to understand he’ll never be very tall, feels useless, young and scrawny by her side.   
He’s invisible and unremarkable by design, and if anybody but Prauf had asked him for his help for this he’d have declined. But he owes the Abednedo, and so there he is. Cold and tired and hungry and missing work time, his arms crossed under his poncho and his back against the wall of the place. For the umpteenth time, Cal reminds himself Prauf’s the reason he has a job in the first place, and then tries to stop looking at the troopers like a person with something to hide. 

He’s not really paying attention to the conversation between his friend and the Rodian: he’s convinced that not even one of the famed Jedi diplomats of old would be able to convince the Guild to change their working conditions and start paying them a higher wage. The Rodian’s scared, and not just of Meeda: he’s wary of being seen talking with them. When he finally leaves, his steps fast and his spiky, yellow head hidden beneath the cowl of his old duster, Cal manages to wait just until he disappears beyond the open door of the cantina before turning to Prauf and saying, “I told you it’d be useless.”  
The Abednedo sighs, shifts his massive shoulders beneath his boilersuit. He doesn’t answer. While Meeda and Cal take a seat around the round plastisteel table, he calls one of the waitresses. Cal feels guilty about letting Prauf treat him to food, but he’s not precisely swimming in credits, and it was one of the conditions for his and Meeda’s presence there. 

The food is there fast. While they eat, Cal listens to Prauf and Meeda argue about what else they can do to pressure the Guild. They both play around with the idea of a strike, of actual protests, before laying it to rest. Cal just listens, his mouth busy chewing and his eyes low, trying not to think about anything but the food in front of him and the warmth of the bowl under his palm. He knows nothing will happen: Prauf and Meeda and all the rest aren’t desperate yet. They are tired, dissatisfied, and disappointed, but mere discomfort doesn’t make martyrs. And that’s what would happen: the Imperial machine is one of hunger and eternal expansion, and any and all problematic elements are to be devoured, scrapped, sold for parts.

Cal would know: he used to be one of them.

*

Cal usually avoids the spaceport. It’s just one of the many on the surface of the planet, and all of them are almost impossible to differentiate from each other: crowded, smelly, always damp, full of neon signs advertising everything, from brothels to spaceship parts, the white of stormtrooper armor everywhere, the faraway noise of spaceship engines a continuous murmur. One of the new Imperial stardestroyers looms over the clouds, its darker silhouette almost invisible. The screeching of the trains and transports that communicate the port with the actual scrap yards contribute to the general chaos. Cal’s first weeks in Bracca are little more than a half remembered nightmare, but he remembers clearly how intense it all felt at first: before he started to let go of his connection to the Force, it seemed as if everything was screaming at him, full of memories and life. He didn’t dare to touch anything, aware of how his psychometry would betray him, unsure if he’d even be able to survive anyone else’s feelings and memories on top of his own.  
Now everything’s just a faraway buzz he can easily ignore, that sometimes he doesn’t even hear anymore. In time, he’s also gotten used to the absence of other consciences, of other souls and minds shining in the Force. He even welcomes it: the solitude is devastating, but it’s also safe. 

He’s waiting with Meeda and Prauf for the transport that will take them back home when he realises something’s wrong. It’s been so long that, at first, he doesn’t even know what he’s feeling: it’s as if all the parts of himself that he’s managed to numb for more than four years are suddenly awake.  
Cal tunes out the quiet conversation, his cowl up to avoid the grimy rain that’s started falling, and feels something give out in his mind. Before he can think twice about it, he’s tentatively reaching out. A strong presence in the Force, bright but quiet, poorly hidden and unaware of this fact. Untrained, like Cal himself knows he is, and familiar. 

Whoever it is, they are close. Cal hides behind Prauf’s bulk and leans to peek beyond him, in the direction of one of the hangars. A mid-size freighter has just touched down, and its crew, along with a number of passengers, is coming out of the ship. He rakes his eyes over them: a couple of Rodians, a spindly Zabrak female who’s missing a leg, a Devaronian of indeterminate gender who’s carrying a crate as big as themselves on their right shoulder, a small group of humans arguing among themselves.   
One of them is young and very tall, with the lanky limbs of one who has yet to grow into himself. He’s dressed like a spacer: steel-toed boots, a dark long coat, brown hair in a ponytail, blaster at his hip. A small bag hangs from his left shoulder.  
Cal cannot see the stranger’s face, but something scratches at his memory. He squints, tilts his head, wishes the man moved so Cal could know for sure who he is. His heart is beating so fast in his chest he feels lightheaded.  
As if he had heard something, the stranger freezes, turns his back to the man he was listening to, a hand on his blaster. His eyes find Cal, who’s too slow to move, to disappear behind his friends. For a few seconds, he’s terrified: he’s sure he’s been found out, that he’s dead, that soon the sound of blaster shots will fill the train station. That he’s killed all his friends. But then he sees beyond the grime on the stranger’s face, through time and place and trauma and everything else in between the people they are now and who they used to be. 

Cal recognises Caleb Dume, and while the horror mostly disappears, the dread stays.

*

Prauf and Meeda have left, and Cal is alone with someone he once knew as Caleb Dume, who moves and talks and scowls like someone else. The cantina buzzes around them: it’s one of the many bars where spacers and scrappers alike go to drink when it’s way too early to drink in a more reputable place, and in the crowd they are mostly invisible. Poor, transient humans are everywhere in the galaxy. Once they sit at a table in a dark corner, they disappear, immediately forgotten.   
Caleb buys himself a drink, and swallows half in an instant. Cal just looks at him. The last time they saw each other, Cal was leaving with Master Tapal, and Caleb was jealous. They’d never been close friends, but they were the same age, and had been in the Temple in Coruscant since they were babies. For years, they trained together, braved Ilium and built their first lightsabers together, slept in the same room and ate the same food and knew the same people. 

Cal knows he should be happy, but seeing Caleb in Bracca only reminds him of everything he has lost. 

“Never thought I’d find anyone here,” says Caleb suddenly. His voice has changed. It’s deeper, rougher. His inner core accent has mostly disappeared, substituted by a placeless, mid-rim drawl that Cal knows is similar to his own.  
“That was the idea,” answers Cal. “Not that it’s bad to see you here, but… well. Didn’t choose to stay in Bracca for the sights.”  
Caleb snorts. The cantina is dark, but they’re close enough Cal can see the remains of a bruise in the bridge of his nose.   
“So you’re a… what? Scrapper?”  
“Rigger,” says Cal. “More dangerous, but pays better. You? What have you been doing?”  
Caleb lowers his eyes, starts playing with his glass. “A bit of everything. For the last couple of years, I’ve been working in some cargo ships. Crew, mostly. Apparently I’m too young to be a pilot.”  
Cal hums and nods, trying to suppress his interest. He’s overwarm under his poncho, but he doesn’t dare take it off. When he leans back on his seat, his knees knock against Caleb’s. He was always tall, but now he towers over him. He looks older than Cal knows he is.  
An awkward silence grows between them then. It’s full of all the things they aren’t talking about: the Purge, their masters, their futures.   
Caleb sighs. He raises his hand, makes as if he was going touch his hair, stops himself halfway. “I’ve been calling myself Kanan Jarrus. As far as everybody knows, Caleb Dume died in custody a couple of years ago.”  
“In custody?” Cal knows he shouldn’t ask, but he can’t help himself. “They found you?”  
Caleb (Kanan?) nods, sips his drink. Cal can smell the astringent odour of the liquor from where he is, but Kanan throws it back as if it were water. “Yes. But I got lucky.”  
“Yeah, I guess that’s a way of looking at it,” deadpans Cal. Kanan snorts, nods into his drink.   
“And you? You’re still Cal Kestis?”   
It’s Cal’s turn to nod. He looks over Kanan’s head, to the cantina beyond. Nobody’s looking at them, so he looks back to Kanan’s face. “Just Cal. You don’t need a surname to work in the wrecks, and it’s a common enough name.”  
Fortunately, until a couple of years ago, you didn’t need an ID either. 

“Have you found anybody else?” Cal finally asks. Kanan shakes his head.   
“You?”   
“Nope.”   
Cal knows that doesn’t mean they are the only ones alive: after all, the galaxy is a very big place, and everyone who survived must be lying low, trying to not attract the Empire’s attention. Working shitty jobs in scrap yards and cargo freighters all over the outer rim.  
“Will you leave?” Cal finally asks. He doesn’t ask why Kanan was there in the first place: he can guess. Being Force-sensitive may be a death sentence, but it also makes them really good at certain jobs, dangerous jobs, the kind of work one can find far away from the inner core of the galaxy.  
“What?”   
“Will you leave Bracca? Now that you know I’m here?”  
“Yeah,” answers Kanan, his eyes low and his voice almost a whisper. “It’s not safe for us to be here together.”  
“Yes. I know”  
A beat of silence, and then Kanan says, “Or maybe you could leave and—”  
He’s joking, a tiny smile hidden in his long face. Cal snorts, kicks him lightly under the table.  
“Oh fuck no, find your own shitty planet. This one’s mine.”  
The previous awkwardness slowly disappears. For a while, they sit in comfortable silence. Kanan finishes his drink and Cal looks around, at the crowd. There’s a weequay couple near the door that’s seconds away from starting a fight; Cal’s trying to guess which of the three bouncers the Ithorian behind the bar employs is going to kick them out when Kanan speaks again. 

“You’ve changed a lot,” he says. Cal blinks, surprised, and then shrugs, uncomfortable. He knows it must be true, but he doesn’t like thinking about it. He’s less than he used to be.  
“It’s been four years,” is his only answer. He touches his face, his fingers finding the by now familiar feeling of his new scars. Blaster shots from his escape, a close call with a laser cutter, an unlucky fall during his first few months on the job.  
Kanan nods in understanding. He’s had his nose broken recently, and now it sits slightly off center.  
“You’ve changed as well,” Cal says.  
“It’s been four years,” repeats Kanan, his voice slightly mocking. He doesn’t meet Cal’s eyes.

*

Cal sees him back to the spaceport, but he doesn’t wait around while Kanan finds himself another transport out of Bracca. They have no way to find each other again, but Cal’s not worried. If Kanan really wants to talk to him, he knows where to find him. He’s not going anywhere.

It’s raining again, and the streets are slowly turning into a sea of mud. Cal raises his cowl and takes the first transport back to work.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm jasondont @ tumblr, come talk to me about rebels and dying twenty times in a row in the boss fight against malicos.


End file.
